This invention relates to apparatus for cooling plural strands of wire emerging from a galvanizing or other hot-dip operation in order that the wire can be handled without marring the surface coating and without danger to a workman.
In the galvanizing of wire material, especially such material as is air cooled following the hot-dip operation, the temperature of the material that is wound on the recoiling spools is at an elevated level, being of the order of 400.degree. F. At this temperature the surface coating has not completely solidified and is in a somewhat plastic state. Such material is troublesome to handle, both from the standpoint of danger of marring or otherwise distorting the surface of the coated wire by its contact with handling equipment as well as from that of creating a hazardous environment in which a workman may be burned. Moreover, if the coated wire is in a plastic state when wound on the recoiling spools adjacent wraps have a tendency to become weldedly united requiring much effort to separate them and often at a cost of having to reject the affected length of material.
It is known to subject wire to a subsequent cooling operation following the quenching step in a galvanizing process. Such an expedient is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,177,754 wherein each wire in the pass line is caused to traverse an individual trough through which cooling liquid is conducted in counter-flow relation to the traverse of the wire. Such a cooling arrangement is undesirable in many applications such as, for example, those in which the temperature of the wire entering the heat exchanger is excessively high; those in which many wires are disposed in close center-to-center relation; and those in which the attitude of the pass line prevents cooling liquid to be gravity-fed in counter-flow relation to the moving wire.
It is to the solution of such problems therefore that the present invention is directed.